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As an adult gamer with limited time, I'm not a completionist at all, so I sympathize with feeling that achievements can be kind of naggy, like I'm being scolded

As an adult gamer with limited time, I'm not a completionist at all, so I sympathize with feeling that achievements can be kind of naggy, like I'm being scolded for not investing further in a title. Part of that is just facing my own demons— like, Spider-Man PS4 was a super fun time; I played it through twice and got almost all the trophies, but I'm not a bad person for being done with it before getting the platinum. On the other hand, recently playing Nobody Saves The World, I've actually come to enjoy the little mini Form Quests that it gives you— you have to complete something like 200 of these to progress the main story (they award stars that are needed to open key dungeon doors), but more importantly, they encourage you to engage with the mix-and-match abilities system that the game offers, which preps you with the mindset that is needed to take on certain late-game challenges. Into The Breach is another excellent title that has in-game completion tracking, encouraging you to get a 2-, 3-, and 4-island victory with each set of mechs, and awarding unlocks at certain milestones of those. So I think I slightly resent but am happy to ignore "bolted on" achievements that are purely observational, but I also appreciate some games that do more with achievement-like challenges in terms of pushing the player to try new strategies.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> Into The Breach is another excellent title that has in-game completion tracking, encouraging you to get a 2-, 3-, and 4-island victory with each set of mechs, and awarding unlocks at certain milestones of those. I f'ing hated the achievement-based unlocks in Into The Breach. If you want to gate content behind beating the game at certain difficulties or something, I guess that's fine, but to do it with arbitrary numbers of random bullshit objectives, many of them luck based, was annoying as hell.
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  > I f'ing hated the achievement-based unlocks in Into The Breach. That's a fair perspective. For my part, I felt pretty consistently when I lost an ITB run that I deserved it— I hadn't lost to a heartless RNG, I had lost because I made a wrong choice, and the scenario would have been beatable if I'd made different tradeoffs. I think what I liked about the progressive unlocking was that I was never overwhelmed by too much choice upfront as happens in some games (think old school RPGs with a spreadsheet character builder as the first screen), and I felt when I did get a new team unlocked like I'd really put in the effort and earned it; I was excited to try it out in a way that I wouldn't be if I just had them all available from the beginning (or unlocked via some other means that I hadn't worked for).
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    > That's a fair perspective. For my part, I felt pretty consistently when I lost an ITB run that I deserved it— I hadn't lost to a heartless RNG, I had lost because I made a wrong choice, and the scenario would have been beatable if I'd made different tradeoffs. ....which has absolutely nothing to do with achievements? I agree, the game design was fine in this regard, it is the gating of unlocks behind arbitrary objectives relying on luck that I have a problem with[0]. If they just gated each team behind beating the game with a previous team I wouldn't have complained. [0] Specifically, unlocking certain characters relied on luck based events, as did even having an attempt at some of the achievements. All achievements need to be unlocked for the final team, which I never got because fuck that noise.
    - mikepurvis 5y ago
      > Specifically, unlocking certain characters relied on luck based events Okay yes, thanks for this clarification. My RNG comment was based on a reading of your previous message that you didn't like progression being gated on completing the main missions because those had a luck component, and while I felt that at first, upon further play it became clear that there really are very few true Kobayashi Maru scenarios in Into The Breach, even on Hard Mode [0]. [0]: Youtuber soulmata has a series of 30k videos that are worth a watch to see what really high level play looks like.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        Yeah, I think I caught that on later reading and I fully agree. There is a certain amount of luck in any given game of Into the Breach, but it isn't a luck-based game. After I got good at it, I never encountered a situation that I felt was impossible due to luck, only because I'd made bad choices somewhere along the line. Pretty much the same praise (and complaint, re: achievements and luck based unlocks) for FTL.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

> Into The Breach is another excellent title that has in-game completion tracking, encouraging you to get a 2-, 3-, and 4-island victory with each set of mechs, and awarding unlocks at certain milestones of those. I f'ing hated the achievement-based unlocks in Into The Breach. If you want to gate content behind beating the game at certain difficulties or something, I guess that's fine, but to do it with arbitrary numbers of random bullshit objectives, many of them luck based, was annoying as hell.

mikepurvis 5y ago
> I f'ing hated the achievement-based unlocks in Into The Breach. That's a fair perspective. For my part, I felt pretty consistently when I lost an ITB run that I deserved it— I hadn't lost to a heartless RNG, I had lost because I made a wrong choice, and the scenario would have been beatable if I'd made different tradeoffs. I think what I liked about the progressive unlocking was that I was never overwhelmed by too much choice upfront as happens in some games (think old school RPGs with a spreadsheet character builder as the first screen), and I felt when I did get a new team unlocked like I'd really put in the effort and earned it; I was excited to try it out in a way that I wouldn't be if I just had them all available from the beginning (or unlocked via some other means that I hadn't worked for).
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  > That's a fair perspective. For my part, I felt pretty consistently when I lost an ITB run that I deserved it— I hadn't lost to a heartless RNG, I had lost because I made a wrong choice, and the scenario would have been beatable if I'd made different tradeoffs. ....which has absolutely nothing to do with achievements? I agree, the game design was fine in this regard, it is the gating of unlocks behind arbitrary objectives relying on luck that I have a problem with[0]. If they just gated each team behind beating the game with a previous team I wouldn't have complained. [0] Specifically, unlocking certain characters relied on luck based events, as did even having an attempt at some of the achievements. All achievements need to be unlocked for the final team, which I never got because fuck that noise.
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    > Specifically, unlocking certain characters relied on luck based events Okay yes, thanks for this clarification. My RNG comment was based on a reading of your previous message that you didn't like progression being gated on completing the main missions because those had a luck component, and while I felt that at first, upon further play it became clear that there really are very few true Kobayashi Maru scenarios in Into The Breach, even on Hard Mode [0]. [0]: Youtuber soulmata has a series of 30k videos that are worth a watch to see what really high level play looks like.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      Yeah, I think I caught that on later reading and I fully agree. There is a certain amount of luck in any given game of Into the Breach, but it isn't a luck-based game. After I got good at it, I never encountered a situation that I felt was impossible due to luck, only because I'd made bad choices somewhere along the line. Pretty much the same praise (and complaint, re: achievements and luck based unlocks) for FTL.